Climate change is a fact, and it is almost entirely made by man. It is jointly responsible for the rise in severe weather-related natural disasters, since the weather machine is “running in top gear”. The figures speak for themselves: according to data gathered by Munich Re, weather-related natural catastrophes have produced US$ 1,600bn in total losses since 1980, and climate change is definitely a significant contributing factor. We assume that the annual loss amount attributable to climate change is already in the low double-digit billion euro range. And the figure is bound to rise dramatically in future.
Those are the words of the CEO of Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, in December. The anti-science crowd tries to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather but even the loudest shouter told the journal Nature back in 2006, “Clearly since 1970 climate change (i.e., defined as by the IPCC to include all sources of change) has shaped the disaster loss record.” Indeed, that Nature article reported four years ago:
At a recent meeting of climate and insurance experts, delegates reached a cautious consensus: climate change is helping to drive the upward trend in catastrophes.
The evidence has only gotten stronger in recent years. A major study published in 2009, “Tropical cyclone losses in the USA and the impact of climate change — A trend analysis based on data from a new approach to adjusting storm losses” concluded:
In the period 1971–2005, since the beginning of a trend towards increased intense cyclone activity, losses excluding socio-economic effects show an annual increase of 4% per annum. This increase must therefore be at least due to the impact of natural climate variability but, more likely than not, also due to anthropogenic forcings.
A 2009 NOAA-led report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, identified a number of climate-related impacts that are occurring now and expected to increase in the future that could shape the disaster loss record:
Many phony charges are now being leveled at the IPCC because the anti-science crowd smells blood in the water, and many “journalists” are ready to repeat their nonsense (see “EXCLUSIVE: UN scientist refutes Daily Mail claim he said Himalayan glacier error was politically motivated.”
The newest phony charge came Sunday from another dubious source in the British press, “UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters.” But on Monday, the IPCC slammed the story as “misleading and baseless.” As the “IPCC statement on trends in disaster losses” explains:
The Sunday Times article gets the story wrong on two key points. The first is that it incorrectly assumes that a brief section on trends in economic losses from climate-related disasters is everything the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) has to say about changes in extremes and disasters. In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report reaches many important conclusions, at many locations in the report, about the role of climate change in extreme events. The assessment addresses both observations of past changes and projections of future changes in sectors ranging from heat waves and precipitation to wildfires. Each of these is a careful assessment of the available evidence, with a thorough consideration of the confidence with which each conclusion can be drawn.
The second problem with the article in the Sunday Times is its baseless attack on the section of the report on trends in economic losses from disasters. This section of the IPCC report is a balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue. It clearly makes the point that one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend. The tone is balanced, and the section contains many important qualifiers. In writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate.
Kudos to the IPCC for responding to a trumped up charged quickly for once!
Chart: Climate-risk disclosure trends among U.S.- and non-U.S.-based insurance companies (Source: CDP data per Mills 2009)
Coincidentally, I already had a guest post in the works from one of the country’s leading experts on the connection between climate change and extreme weather and the impact on the insurance industry, Evan Mills. So, the rest of this post is Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whom I have known for almost two decades. He is a true polymath (see “Building Commissioning: The Stealth Energy Efficiency Strategy“):
I had the pleasure of keynoting a meeting on climate change convened last month in San Francisco by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the American Insurance Association (AIA), the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA), and Ceres. The speaker line-up included Fireman’s Fund, Prudential Capital Group, Deutsche Asset Management, CalPERS, Willis Re, Zurich Financial Services,Wells Fargo, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, NRDC, the California Department of Insurance, and several catastrophe modeling and environmental consultants. All spoke in unison about the risks and opportunities of climate change and the role that insurers and their regulators are increasingly playing in responding to it.
I argued in my presentation that climate change is the single greatest risk facing the insurance industry. Ernst & Young’s survey of 70 industry analysts seems to agree with me. As I’ve explained in Science, climate change is a systemic risk not unlike the banking crisis that blindsided almost everyone thanks in no small part to a nasty cocktail of undisclosed risks and wishful thinking. Astute insurers recognize a panoply of potential correlated losses triggered by climate change spanning the core business of underwriting (in almost every line of business, from property to life/health to liability), coupled with exposures through the assets in which they invest, topped off with with formidable collatoral reputational, regulatory, and competitive risks. A vanguard of insurers are responding with new products, services, and constructive engagement in public policy.
I also pointed out that insurer shareholders have emerged in force, most notably through the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), with members representing $55 trillion under management. Now, U.S. insurance regulators are asking insurers to proactively disclose their climate-risk assessment for the benefit of shareholders, customers, and, yes, even the insurers themselves.
During the Q&A period, Robert Detlefsen, from the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC), asked to share a “comment” (which he emphasized was not a question) about my presentation. Detlefsen–formerly with Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Competitive Enterprise Institute–was displeased that I had not given more attention to the infamous CRU emails. I responded that I would be delighted to discuss the subject with him at length after the session. He elected not to take me up on this offer.
Pseudoscience appears to be more compelling to some than fact-based science or the pursuit of genuine understanding. Insurance based on pseudoscience risks deteriorating into pseudoinsurance.
A peculiar article by Evan Lehmann in the New York Times dredges up the stale CRU story (which has otherwise fizzled for lack of substance) and features Detlefsen’s distrust of science and distaste for climate risk disclosure, as summarized in a letter to his members’ regulators reiterating his concerns.
To the uninitiated reader, Lehmann’s piece might suggest that the entire insurance industry is questioning the veracity of climate science or the value of risk disclosure. What readers are left on their own to discover is that NAMIC–the trade organization featured as skeptical on climate change–“represents” but one branch of the industry (the mutual insurers). Two other insurance trade associations (AIA and RAA) not only co-hosted the summit but were actually on stage that day advancing a constructive discussion about how to get in front of the problem. Readers would also not have suspected that Detlefsen’s own organization sends a very different message through its excellent web portal on climate and insurance. Ironically, the insurance trade press has thus far given far more balanced treatment to these issues.
While Detlefsen characterizes the motivation of others in seeking climate-risk disclosure to regulators, shareholders, and customers as having “nakedly ideological ends,” over 100 insurance companies (approaching 70% of those asked) have somehow seen their way to replying to a voluntary climate risk disclosure process that has been conducted for years through CDP. They frequently find that the very process of assembling climate-disclosure documentation is constructive (not just a compliance exercise) and helps them think through the issues and better assess their risk and their progress towards managing that risk. Other U.S. insurance trade organizations have worked collaboratively to help craft the U.S. disclosure process. One of them, the American Insurance Association, is noted as being far more at peace with the regulators’ climate disclosure efforts than is NAMIC. Any observer would have to read quite a lot between the lines to support Detelfsen’s stipulation that that the regulators have any pre-determined expectations about the conclusions that insurers’ will reach through the disclosure process.
Climate skepticism among insurance trade associations like NAMIC is a more or less uniquely American phenomenon. Even then, some of NAMICs largest members—including household names like State Farm, Nationwide and Liberty Mutual —have been accepting of the science and very proactive in identifying responses to climate-change risks. To my knowledge, none have retracted their previous statements based on the stolen emails.
Other U.S. insurance tradegroups do not share Detlefsen’s perspective. The Reinsurance Association of America engaged in the climate discussion 15 years ago, and recently issued a constructive and proactive climate change policy statement. The American Insurance Association has also been engaged for over a decade, including participation in international fora. The Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers issued a policy statement just before the Copenhagen meeting. These trade associations seem to believe that it is not only appropriate but also beneficial for themselves and the companies they represent to engage.
Although invoked by Detlefsen as a reason to scuttle the disclosure process, the “tempest in a thimble” brought on by the stolen emails has been debunked ad nauseum, including in a systematic third-party review by the Associated Press. [I cite the AP review only for those readers who don’t want to trust the scientific establishment for policing itself and reviewing the CRU issue formally.] Any substance that may remain does not change our fundamental scientific understanding of climate change. What Detlefsen desribes in his letter as my “intolerance for dissent” in finding no smoking gun in these emails, is more accurately characterized as my desire (and responsibility as a practicing scientist) to keep science fact-based. The factual inaccuracies that underpin the critics’ interpretation of these emails suggest either a very human tendancy to explain away bad news, profound technical incompetence, or sheer desperation in trying to delay addressing the risks. The interests of society (including those of insurers) are poorly served by sensationalized (and often non-fact-checked) reporting on peer-reviewed science. I would only add that questioning the findings of climate science based on non-expert interpretations of these emails is tantamount to discarding the very practice of scientific inquiry, while dismissing the judgment of hundreds of governments, business groups, and religious organizations that have scrutinized and accepted what mainstream science (and the Nobel Prize committee) has concluded about climate change since inquiry began over a century ago. From the Pentagon to the Supreme Court to the Vatican – human-induced climate change is accepted fact. This leaves precious little for holdouts to hang their hats on.
Chart: Climategate plot from Google/trends (Source: http://www.google.com/trends)
Many insurance companies can’t be bothered with foot-dragging. Through 2008, we documented nearly 643 specific activities on the part of 246 insurance entities from 29 countries (as well as 34 non-insurer collaborators). This represented a 50% year-over-year increase in the level of activity compared to that observed through 2007. These entities collectively earned $1.2 trillion in annual premiums that year (more than a quarter of the global total) and had $13 trillion in assets, while employing 2.2 million people.
Exasperated with the outcome in Copenhagen last month, the CEO of Munich Re (the world’s largest and most science-focused reinsurer) stated that:
“Climate change is a fact, and it is almost entirely made by man. It is jointly responsible for the rise in severe weather-related natural disasters, since the weather machine is “running in top gear”. The figures speak for themselves: according to data gathered by Munich Re, weather-related natural catastrophes have produced US$ 1,600bn in total losses since 1980, and climate change is definitely a significant contributing factor. We assume that the annual loss amount attributable to climate change is already in the low double-digit billion euro range. And the figure is bound to rise dramatically in future.”
To probe the internal consistency of Detlefsen’s hypothesis for a moment, even if climate change may not be happening, isn’t risk a product of uncertainty, and don’t insurers repeatedly tell us that “risk is our business”? And doesn’t selectively feeding on newspaper soundbites instead of thousands of peer-reviewed technical articles for climate intelligence invite myopia and risks of its own? Regulators—and insurance customers—expect a far higher level of due diligence. This is summed up well in a leading actuarial journal by the former corporate actuary and vice president of risk management for Nationwide Insurance — one of NAMIC’s largest members — and current chair of the Casualty Actuarial Society’s Climate Change Committee:
“For anyone attempting to move through the informational confusion on climate-change issues, the proliferation of counterfactual information makes the task daunting. Though the vast majority of climatologists support the global-warming theory, much of the media coverage gives approximately equal weight to the proponents of each side of the debate. … We need to recognize the likelihood that some climate changes are probable rather than improbable.”
Pretzel logic aside, foreword-looking insurers are adapting to a host of risks and opportunities. Technology and business practices are changing as fast as fast as the climate itself. This is already reshaping the demand for insurance. New risks will arise, e.g. those associated with carbon capture and storage, a revival of nuclear power, and geoengineering. Insurers that ignore this transition do so at their peril.
– Evan Mills
JR: Here are some related posts:
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In the debate on nuclear power in the US, a decades dead industry in denial with huge current liabilities, why don’t insurance companies seek to cover this “industry” (a federally created ponzi scheme of poison and permanent devaluations) by allowing all property owners to insure against losses from radioactive contamination? Why have they remained silent about their shut-out from “free market risk assessment”?
As far as insurance against climate change, this is meaningless. Their only hope is prevention/mitigation by helping to transform the destructive industries of mined hydrocarbon and forest burning toward sustainable human activities/economies. The world does not need to just reduce emissions, we need to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions, and then go carbon negative. We have a “Western” economy with way too much gas. Time to take some antacid, as in elimination carbonic acid gas (CO2) completely from the “economy.”
I wonder if the insurance companies have noted a rise in claims resulting from fallen trees. There have been and will be many more costs associated with dying trees, which will include branches and trunks hitting and damaging power lines, telephone lines, homes and outbuildings, cars, business properties, and people. Then too, there will be more and more wildfires.
Who is going to cover claims from plant nurseries and farms for crop losses from rising levels of toxic greenhouse gases? It will be interesting to see!
Joe, I’ve often wondered whether it would be more effective to frame the climate-change issue as a risk management issue as a way to render the knitpicking of climate deniers completely pointless. Risk management rests on a body of evidence, not a report here or a soundbite there, and the best example of it can be found in the insurance industry, who has no other motivation but to save its own butt.
[JR: Well, nothing can stop the anti-science crowd. The IPCC works on a body of evidence, but is run by humans who can be knitpicked to death. But the deniers make up stuff so I see no escape from them. One guy in particular has devoted his career to questioning the integrity of anybody who makes the link between global warming and extreme weather. If there is a foolproof messaging strategy, I'd love to hear it. But too many people are have studied the art of fooling people and too few in the media care enough to learn the facts.]
The Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city of Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900. It had estimated winds of 135 miles per hour (217 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.[1]
The hurricane caused great loss of life with the estimated death toll between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals;[2] the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of casualties of any Atlantic hurricane
Can you all explain this? I know this is before the era of storm insurance so therefore it is not reported.
[JR: What's to explain? We've always had extreme weather events. Climate science says that certain extreme weather events will become more intense and/or more frequent. In the case of deluges, that prediction has already been observationally verified.]
In order, Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gases are:
water vapor
carbon dioxide
methane
nitrous oxide
ozone
chlorofluorocarbons
You claim Wit’s end that there will be claims from farms and nurseries for damage. which of the gases is Damaging and please give an example or study.
Name just one that hampers crop yields. Thank God these warmists are not into farming. They have no clue.
Methane is the large output from Rice farming.
Thanks a lot for this article, most particularly the portion dealing with Detlefsen, who does not on the face of his position appear to be a man whose priorities seem fully aligned with those of his industry.
I think it’s fascinating to see the difference in approach between firms with an enormous direct financial interest in the sales of fossil fuels versus another titanic industry with fiduciary responsibilities related to fossil fuels only inasmuch as C02 emissions pose a potential threat.
One industry relies on promoting misunderstanding of science on an ever increasing scale as a key to success, the other relies on scrupulous operational integration of scientific findings for continued health. Crystal clear, night versus day, highly informative.
So the insurance industry has reached a general agreement that climate change is a threat to their financial well being, and members appear comfortable with ascribing climate change to human influences. Any contrarians care to formulate a coherent explanation for the consensus position of the insurance industry?
@ #4 Shawn Grey: “Can you all explain this?”
Explain what? That there were hurricanes in the past?
Shawn Grey says: January 26, 2010 at 4:19 pm
(Galveston)
Shawn, I know it’s absolutely vital to your cause that you wave a distracting brightly colored blanket, but you know as well as do I: Galveston was settled by a population essentially ignorant of hurricanes. What does Galveston in 1906 have to do with today, 104 years later?
Your flapping blanket has nothing to do with climate change.
(greenhouse gases)
That’s a compelling argument for nobody, counterproductive to your cause because it’s not memorized to the level required for anybody to be able to understand what you’re trying to repeat.
“Can you all explain this?”
Between now and 1906, let’s see. Ohhhh, let me take a stab….
Television
Radio
Satellite imagery
National Hurricane Center
Hurricane Hunter aircraft (and a US Air Force, for that matter)
A sea wall
I’m done.
What convinced me that there was truly something to climate change wasn’t the insurance companies, but the shipping companies. Several years ago the NY Times had an article about shipping lines investing millions (maybe billions?) of dollars building ports along the Arctic coast in preparation for the advent of trans-Arctic shipping routes.
Now these are business people investing tremendous amounts of money. As an accounting-type person (I have a degree in Geosciences as well but life led me here), I know that these company executives don’t approve that kind of capital investment without a reasonably certain return on that investment. Which means they’ve looked at the data, or hired others who’ve looked at the data, and concluded there’s money to be made by shipping goods across the Arctic. Since they plan on running ships and not sleds with dogs, they clearly believe the Arctic will be significantly ice free for enough of the year to generate an appropriate return.
So the deniers can yap all they wish. There are hard nosed business people out there putting up real money.
Unlike RPJr.
Thank you PSU Grad. We keep talking about needing a climate change “Pearl Harbor” and I think the loss of ice in the arctic has the potential to be at least a minor “Pearl Harbor”. This blows the denier bleats about “ice extent” out of the water.
That, combined with the this blog’s current content on how the insurance companies are taking climate change so seriously could, I think, be combined with others, e.g., growing season trends, to present an unambiguous picture of climate change that even the most persistent denier would hard pressed to refute believably.
What a great article for someone in the MSM to get right.
If someone has done this, please point me to them.
PSU Grad, I would love to read that article. Is it online still?
Oh, and I can off the top of my head think of the ultimate fool-proof denier argument against this post: The insurance companies are in on the conspiracy!! Doesn’t anyone GET IT??Follow the MONEY!! They’re making MILLIONS of the FEAR!! Warmist enviro-naz*s etc. etc. *speckleflecked denier rant*
Shawn Grey, #5, I would be delighted to supply an example or study of greenhouse gas damage to vegetation. And I don’t blame you for not taking kindly to the notion, because greenhouse gases are rising, and the prospect that they are killing trees and crops is quite terrifying to anyone with any sense. The foundation of our terrestrial ecosystems and our source of food are at existential risk.
Unfortunately, it is well-documented, in fact undisputed, that significant greenhouse gases – nitrogen oxides, and sulphur dioxides, which are the precursors to ozone and acid rain are poisonous – to humans, causing cancer, emphysema, and asthma – and that vegetation is even more sensitive. The question is at what level in the atmosphere do these components become lethal. I personally wonder whether levels of methane and CO2, which are higher than they have been for millions of years, can possibly sustain forms of life like today’s trees and other plants, that evolved relatively recently. But it isn’t necessary to include that issue to recognize that the other greenhouse gases are quite sufficient to kill life as we know it.
It has been understood for decades that acid rain formed from fuel emissions depletes the soils of essential nutrients for trees, which has led to dieback in even remote forested areas. Less attention has been paid to the damage done by ozone and acid fog to foliage. Those have been shown to impede the ability of foliage to photosynthesize and produce chlorophyll, by damaging the stomata, leading to symptoms of leaf stippling, droop, wilt, crown diminishment, and ultimately death in trees, both coniferous and deciduous. In fact any plant can be affected through chronic low-level exposure, or higher level episodic exposure.
Most people – and government agencies, and even NGO conservation groups – would rather ignore this enormous problem because the only way to improve the situation is to reduce emissions.
So in answer to your question as to whether I can refer you to studies…yeah! for some time now I have been posting any related research I can locate on a blog. Following is a particular item that has handy links (towards the end) to peer-reviewed research – but first allow me to apologize to *most* scientists for the title – I was kind of annoyed when I wrote that! http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/ 2010/ 01/ scientists-are-egomaniacal-douchebags.html
Ooh. Looky here:
http://oregonstate.edu/ ua/ ncs/ archives/ 2010/ jan/ maximum-height-extreme-waves-dramatically-pacific-northwest
Shawn Gray;
Although the combination of posts you’ve made seems to indicate that you’re not skeptical about climate change, but are instead a denier afraid that there’s an immoral conspiracy at work to destroy our country, here are a couple things to consider.
There are some great detailed accounts of the disastrous Galveston Hurricane one of the key passages I remember was the number of people who gathered on the barrier island to witness the astounding waves. One man who knew what this meant – hurricane about to make landfall – rode up and down the beach on horseback pleading with people to leave the island for higher ground. There was only one small bridge to the mainland. He gave up in despair. It’s estimated that thousands were drowned in the storm surge on that beach. This was years before “wireless” so no one knew for certain that there was a hurricane headed towards Galveston.
Times have changed.
In the 80’s the Royal Horticulture Society (RHS) noticed a strange trend in data it’s members had been collecting for centuries. Tens of thousands of Gardeners in Britain and in Commonwealth nations had been recording first and last killing frost, first and last light frost, leaf out and leaf drop, minimum and maximum temperatures for each month, and other data. By the 80’s they’d already developed a “hockey stick” on this data. What alarmed them most was the possibility that many plants that needed winter chill to survive would no longer thrive in their locales. The major plants with this need are trees. The RHS concluded that this could result in the decline and loss of forest over significant areas of the earth.
Again, people ignored the findings of “simple gardeners”.
Will we witness people who fail to take heed of warnings, fail to take prudent measures, or fail to even discuss the most prudent approach?
Wit’s End:
Thanks for the link. Reading the story, as the researchers note, proves that they don’t know what is causeing the larger waves.
Wit”s End: Thank you for the “wave height report”. It occurs to me after reading the report and thinking about the recent BIG, although not vicious, storm. As storms get bigger in circumference the effective fetch if the wind becomes “straighter,” allowing seas to build higher for any given wind force. So wave height may be building because the systems are increasing in physical size as much in possible strength.
Years ago, I noticed the trees in our town looked droopy and unhealthy. They were like that all summer and I wondered if perhaps it could be due to Global Warming but didn’t know. They just didn’t look healthy.
Later, while traveling to work I noticed that most of the trees had sacks of– I guess insect infestation. It wasn’t just one or two trees; almost all of them were like this. All the way to work, most of the trees along the streets had these insect sacs hanging on them. The only place I don’t remember seeing it was when I finally got to Pa. There, in the country-like atmosphere, the trees looked much healthier with no insect sacs.
According to (Senator) Mitchell, in his book, “World on Fire”, “the die back of forests will start to be noticeable after a rise in temperature of 1.5 degrees, then come with a rush… warmer temperatures could set a host of migrating pests on forests that have up until now been our of reach.” (p.79). (I imagine he has footnotes and references.)
Another really curious thing– We’ve had a few rainstorms (not that much wind, just a lot of rain). And afterwards, we’ve seen tree after tree just fallen over. There would be several trees on one street which had just fallen over after a lot of rain!
espiritwater, the dieback of forests is indeed coming as Senator Mitchell predicted, in a rush. Trees are crumbling, rotted from the inside, from atmospheric poisoning. Here is a series of x-rated photos not suitable for the young or faint of heart: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/ 2009/ 09/ we-are-all-watermelon-now.html because the level of intolerable atmospheric toxins has passed beyond cumulative long term damage over to short-term annual destruction.
But don’t expect the US Dept. of Agriculture to admit to that until the grocery store shelves are empty and food is unaffordable. They are fudging the numbers to avert consumer panic.
Sorry for multiple posts on a slightly off-topic issue, but this morning I discovered total vindication: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-rest-my-case.html
Please check this out JR. Once people are aware that their children’s food supply is endangered perhaps they will be a bit more supportive of clean energy production!
Evan Mills’ denunciation of my letter to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, in which I protest the imposition of a new “climate risk” disclosure rule for insurance companies, employs a puerile debating tactic that goes something like this: “My position on global warming is infallibly correct, as evidenced by the fact that lots of scientists agree with me. Scientists who disagree with my views are guilty of practicing pseudo-science, as evidenced by their failure to agree with me and others who share my views.”
Applying this tautology to global warming and insurance requires only a slight modification: “My position on the relationship between global warming and insurance is infallibly correct, as evidenced by the fact that some insurance company executives and trade associations agree with me. Insurers and insurance trade associations that disagree with my views are guilty of practicing “pseudo-insurance,” as evidenced by their failure to agree with me and others who share my views.”
This crude method of discourse runs through Mills’ entire polemic. At one point, he pompously declares that “questioning the findings of climate science based on non-expert interpretations of [the CRU e-mails] is tantamount to discarding the very practice of scientific inquiry, while dismissing the judgments of hundreds of government, business groups, and religious organizations that have scrutinized and accepted what mainstream science (and the Nobel Prize committee) has concluded about climate change since inquiry began over a century ago.” Translation: It’s wrong to question climate research that Mills favors based on “non-expert interpretations” of the behavior of the scientists responsible for the research, but it’s also wrong to dismiss the opinions of those non-experts (“government, business groups, and religious organizations”) who agree with Mills.
This is pure sophistry, not some high-minded defense of “the very practice of scientific inquiry.” Mills surely knows that scientists on all sides of the AGW debate are appalled at the chicanery revealed in the CRU e-mails. But he insists that we ignore them and instead accept the verdict of some AP reporters. So much for Mills’ injunction against trusting “non-expert interpretations.”
Anyway, since neither I nor my association has taken a position on the AGW debate, I can hardly be accused of “dismissing the judgments” of anyone. It is Mills who appears to be habitually dismissive of all evidence and viewpoints that don’t accord with his own rigid beliefs.
23. Robert Detlefsen says: “Mills surely knows that scientists on all sides of the AGW debate are appalled at the chicanery revealed in the CRU e-mails.But he insists that we ignore them and instead accept the verdict of some AP reporters. So much for Mills’ injunction against trusting “non-expert interpretations.””
——————————————————-
If I see the words “Trenberth” and “travesty”, without the word “CERES”, one more time I’m throwing myself off a cliff.
By the way, check out what’s happening off the coast of China:
http://www.china.org.cn/ environment/ 2010-01/ 28/ content_19320075.htm
Let’s hope Chinese insurance covers floods.